


No Human Being Would Stack Books Like This

by Laroja



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M, No beta we die like mne, Pre-Slash, you'll have to pry teacher!steve out of my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 11:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17939174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laroja/pseuds/Laroja
Summary: It's 1991, Steve's a teacher and he still has a penchant for getting involved in weird shit. At least this time there's a handsome FBI agent around to get into trouble with.





	No Human Being Would Stack Books Like This

**Author's Note:**

> According to GoogleDocs, I started this fic on Nov 2, 2017. Yeah...  
> I started it because S2 left me supremely salty about how the whole thing with Steve, Nancy and Jonathan went down. Then I didn't touch the fic for over a year and now I'm a lot less salty but this version of Steve's future I came up with stayed with me and honestly, at this point it's pretty much my personal canon so... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> I also once thought to myself that I really didn't understand the appeal of shipping a character with an OC but here we are, I guess! With so many OCs!  
> The title is a Ghostbusters quote. Since there's an actual ghost being busted in this fic, I thought it'd be fitting. Also, I literally spent more time trying to come up with a title than writing this fic and this was the best I could come up with.

Agent David Fuller crouches over the goo on the ground and does what any professional would do in this situation. He pokes it with a stick.

The goo wobbles and David feels a familiar chill that, paired with the goo, can only mean one thing.

“Ectoplasm,” he says. “A ghost?”

“Yup,” his colleague, Agent Mallory Danvers, answers. “It attacked a bunch of children and their teacher. They’re over there with Callahan.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“The teacher’s a bit banged up but that’s it. Everyone else is uninjured.” Danvers answers and David raises an eyebrow.

“Really? That’s unusual.”

“Really. According to the kids, the ghost disappeared when the teacher hit it with a baseball bat.”

David stares at her for a few seconds. “A baseball bat,” he echoes incredulously.

“That’s what they said,” Danvers shrugs and David looks back at the goo - the ectoplasm - and pokes it again for good measure.

“Huh.”

“I know. Anyway, teach’s name is Steve Harrington, figured you’d wanna talk to him yourself.”

David nods and finally gets up, walking over towards where Callahan is standing, surrounded by a group of small children and their parents who are busy yelling at the man and David really does not envy poor Callahan right now. He knows that type of parents, has had more than enough experience dealing with them in and out of his job and he’s not a fan. He decides to give them a wide berth, lest they descend upon him too and instead strides over to where the teacher is being fussed over by a medic and oh. Oh.

David had expected an older man, maybe someone in his forties, but. Well. Steve Harrington is young, probably even a couple of years younger than David himself and his brown hair is artfully styled and looks soft and fluffy and David feels the sudden urge to run his fingers through it, mess it up and… David coughs awkwardly, stopping that line of thinking right in its tracks and Harrington looks away from the medic and their eyes meet and oh no. Steve Harrington is  _ really  _ pretty.

David clears his throat and forces a smile that he hopes looks reassuring and not like he’d just had very inappropriate thoughts about a witness. He holds out his hand.

“Mr Harrington,” he says in his most pleasant voice. “I’m Agent Fuller with the FBI, do you mind if I ask you some questions about what happened tonight?”

Harrington shakes his hand and gives him a calculating look before he shrugs. “If I said yes, you’d still ask me those questions, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m afraid so, Mr Harrington. Now, can you tell me what happened?”

Harrington shrugs again. “Me and the kids were staying behind after school. Then there was a thing. Then there was screaming. More screaming. And then I hit the thing with my baseball bat and it disappeared. That’s about it.”

“Right, your… baseball bat.”

“Yup,” Harrington says, popping the ‘p’, and he pats something next to him. A baseball bat with…

“Are those  _ nails _ ?” he asks incredulously.

“Yup.”

“And you had that with you  _ at school _ ?”

Harrington raises his hands defensively. “Hey, it’s a school. Shit happens at schools. I like to be prepared.”

David opens his mouth to say something but thinks better about it. There were more important things to question this man about. He hasn’t used the bat to hurt any children so it isn’t David’s job to delve deeper into that. Probably.

“So, that ‘thing’,” he says instead. “Can you describe it?”

“I…” Harrington falters for a moment and David feels momentarily sorry for him. Brushes with the supernatural are always disconcerting but when you have no idea such things exist? “I’m not quite sure how to describe it,” Harrington continues. “It looked like a man but also… not? It looked… translucent? And it, like, floated? And then it just made those weird noises and tried to attack my kids and…”

Harrington trails off, looking uncomfortable and unsettled. David nods. That does sound like your typical, run-of-the-mill ghost.

“You said it looked like a man? Can you describe what the man looked like?” 

“Uh, yeah,” Harrington says. “He was, um, about as tall as you? Balding, looked to be around fifty, or something? It was… hard to tell. Y’know. Wore glasses. I… There’s, um, one other thing.”

David lifts an eyebrow at the hesitance in Harrington’s voice. “Yes?”

“God, this is gonna sound crazy,” Harrington sighs. “I mean, even crazier than it already does.”

“Hey,” David says with a smile. “It’s alright. No matter how crazy it is, I won’t judge you. This is a judgment free zone. I promise.”

Harrington huffs a laugh at that. “Sure, okay, uh. There was a gunshot wound.”

“A gunshot wound?”

“Yes. It looked like the… man… thing had been shot,” he points at his chest, “right here. But. I mean. That’s crazy.”

“As I said, Mr Harrington, no judgment. Anything else?”

David watches Harrington deflate slightly and he can’t help but feel bad for it. But it’s not like he can just tell Harrington that he’d seen the ghost of a man who’d apparently been shot.

“I… No. That’s all I can remember, sorry,” Harrington says.

“That’s fine. He didn’t look familiar?”

Harrington gives him a weird look. “No.”

“Okay. One more question. What were you and the kids still doing at school?”

“Oh,” Harrington looks a bit startled. “Um, AV Club.”

“AV Club?”

“Yeah. The kids, they’re all giant nerds and love this sh- uh, stuff and we got some new equipment in and they wanted to take a look. I was… supervising.”

“That’s nice,” David says and gives Harrington another smile, this one more genuine. “Alright, Mr Harrington, that’s all for now. If you could please leave your contact information with Agent Callahan over there, in case we have follow-up questions…”

“Hey, can I ask you something too?” Harrington blurts out before David can move away. David raises an eyebrow but nods.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“What the hell was that thing?”

“Oh,” David says. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Harrington repeats and crosses his arm, giving David an unimpressed look.

“Yes. Well, not nothing. We’re suspecting a gas leak. Mass hallucination, you know?”

“Sure,” Harrington says and it’s clear he doesn’t believe a word of what David is saying but it doesn’t look like he’s going to ask more questions and David decides that it’s probably better to make a hasty retreat just in case Harrington changes his mind.

As he turns, his eyes catch on the baseball bat again and he looks back at Harrington.

“Oh, one more thing,” he says. “Those nails on your bat… Are they iron?”

Harrington gives him a confused look. “Uh, I don’t know. I think so? Why?”

David smiles. “No reason.”

 

 

 

“Ugh, I can’t find anything,” Danvers groans the next day. “I can’t find anyone who worked at that school who matches the witness’ description and was shot to death.”

Next to her, Callahan nods and David sighs.

“There  _ has  _ to be something,” he says. “The ectoplasm, the feeling of coldness  _ and  _ the teacher’s description… It has to be a ghost.”

“You sure we can trust what that teacher said? I mean, who the hell keeps a bat with fucking nails at a school?” Sandoval snorts and David frowns at the man.

“Why he had the bat doesn’t matter. It’s a good thing he did, it probably saved their lives.”

David feels oddly defensive about Steve Harrington and his bat. He’s pretty sure though that he doesn’t want to examine why that is.

“It’s still weird,” Sandoval mutters but David elects to ignore him. That's usually the best way to deal with Sandoval.

“We must have missed something,” he says right as at the other end of the room, Dooley squeaks in excitement.

David and the other three agents turn in unison to look at their newest and youngest team member.

“Dooley?” David asks and she blushes slightly but still jumps to her feet immediately, quickly walking over to him and handing him a bunch of papers.

“I think I found our ghost,” she says breathlessly. “We couldn’t find anyone at the school who matched what we were looking for so I expanded the search to the entire area and,” she gestures triumphantly at the papers, “Glen Morrow. Matches the physical description and he was shot at home by his wife in a marital dispute.”

“That’s great and all,” Danvers says. “But what does he have to do with the school? Why would his ghost be there?”

Dooley takes a deep breath and claps her hands once. “Well, we had this theory, didn’t we? That sometimes spirits aren’t bound to the place they died in but to a specific object instead? Right, so. Morrow apparently was super into radios and recently, the school bought one of his radios,” she looks at them all, eyes bright. “What if his soul was bound to that radio?”

For a few seconds, everyone is silent, then-

“Shit,” David says. “AV Club.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Callahan raises his eyebrows and David sighs.

“AV Club. Harrington said they’d gotten new equipment the kids wanted to look at. That’s why they stayed behind after school.”

“AV Club?” Sandoval snorts. “That’s still a thing?”

David gives Dooley’s papers a cursory glance to double-check her information.

“Good work, Dooley,” he says and smiles slightly at the young agent’s pleased look. “I guess we’re gonna get to test that theory tonight.”

 

 

 

It’s dark by the time they arrive back at the school. The headmaster is already waiting for them and he gives David an annoyed and unimpressed look as he hands him the master key to the school.

“You better not destroy my school,” the old man grumbles. “Or I’m going to sue you for every single cent you’re worth.”

“We’ll be careful,” David promises and with another glare at them, the headmaster leaves.

“You’d think we weren’t trying to help him,” Danvers snipes. “I mean, we could just leave him with an angry, volatile ghost, see how he likes that.”

“Be nice, Danvers,” David says and Danvers rolls her eyes.

“Fine, fine. I’m right though.”

David sighs and looks at Danvers and Dooley. “Alright, let’s do this. I want this done as soon as possible.”

“Ooh, got a hot date waiting for you, Fuller?” Danvers teases.

“Sure,” David says as he unlocks the entrance to the school and pushes the door open. “Just me, her and  _ Matilda _ .”

Danvers laughs as she follows him inside and Dooley gives him a confused look.

“What?” she asks, sounding lost and David smiles at her.

“My daughter Lisa,” he says. “I’ve been reading her  _ Matilda _ as a bedtime story. She loves it.”

“Oh,” Dooley says. “I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

“Yeah, she’s six,” he explains and Danvers add, “David’s been taking care of her on his own ever since that bitch Margo just up and left them.”

“Danvers,” David reprimands and she closes her mouth sheepishly. “Anyway. Let’s get going.”

“So how do we do this?” Danvers asks as they move down the dark corridor. “What happens when we find that radio?”

“Well,” Dooley says. “I’ve been doing some reading and the best course of action seems to be to handle it the same way we usually do.”

“Burn it?”

“Burn it.”

“Right,” David says, pointing his flashlight down another corridor. “According to the headmaster, AV Club is down there.”

Together, they move carefully down the hall and stop in front of the door to the AV Club’s room.

“Ready?” David looks at the two women. Danvers gives him a thumbs up while Dooley shakily nods her head. David slowly pushes the door open, ready for the ghost of Glen Morrow to appear and attack them but… Nothing happens.

Danvers shrugs at him and they walk into the room.

“Well,” Danvers says. “Maybe we got lucky this time.”

David groans. “Great, Danvers, now you’ve jinxed it. Let’s just find that stupid radio and hope Danvers’ optimism doesn’t come back to haunt us.”

“Literally,” Danvers snorts and David spends a moment to ask himself why he is friends with that woman.

They pass the next few minutes in silence, each of them searching the room for a haunted radio.

“It’s not here,” Dooley finally says. “Maybe I was wrong.”

“Or maybe it’s just somewhere else,” David replies. “We just have to find it.”

“So what, you want us to search this entire school?” Danvers asks and David levels her with a look.

“If that’s what it takes.”

Danvers groans and inwardly, David agrees.

“Let’s split up,” he suggests. “That way we can cover more ground and hopefully find the stupid thing sooner.”

“Sure that’s a good idea?” Danvers asks skeptically and David shrugs.

“If a school teacher can chase off that ghost with a baseball bat then it shouldn’t be a problem for armed, trained FBI agents, should it? Stay alert and if you find anything radio in immediately and wait for backup.”

“Aye, aye,” Danvers mock salutes him.

Dooley looks nervous and a little bit sick but she nods anyway. David knows that she’s relatively new at this but she’s still brave and she’s going to have to learn sooner or later. She’ll be fine.

They spend a few minutes dividing up the sections of the school between each other and then they move out and David is alone. Hunting a ghost. Wonderful.

He sighs and raises his flashlight. The sooner he finds the haunted radio, the sooner he can get out of here and get home to his daughter.

 

 

 

The search is uneventful. David doesn’t find the radio or the ghost. Occasionally, he checks in with Danvers and Dooley to see how they’re doing but both women report much of the same. Maybe they did get it wrong. Maybe there was something else at play here. Maybe there was nothing at play here at all. It's happened before. Harrington and his kids wouldn’t be the first ones to make up a supernatural encounter.

David gives himself and the rest of his team 30 more minutes before he’ll call the whole thing off. Just 30 more minutes.

He turns a corner and collides with something warm and solid. 

There’s a scream and David jerks back and instinctively draws his gun, ready to shoot a salt round at the ghost when his brain kicks in and reminds him that  _ ghosts aren’t solid _ .

“What the…” he mutters and then barely has time to duck out of the way of a bat with fucking nails in it.

“Harrington?” he hisses and it is, indeed, Steve Harrington who’s standing in front of him, eyes wild, the bat still raised, ready for another swing.

They both stare at each other for a few seconds until Harrington coughs awkwardly and lowers the bat.

“Agent Fuller!” he exclaims. “Hi! What are you doing here?”

“What am I… What are  _ you  _ doing here?”

“I work here!”

“Not at this time, you don’t!”

“I, uh, had stuff? To do? So I, uh… Yeah.”

David can’t help but laugh. Harrington’s not a good liar. “Right, of course. That’s why you’re prowling the school corridors in the dark with a bat. Wait a second,” David narrows his eyes at the teacher, “you’re here looking for that… thing you think you saw. I told you, it’s just a-”

“I swear, if you say the words ‘gas leak’ right now, I’m not gonna miss with my bat this time. You and I both now it’s not a gas leak.”

“Oh, and what do you think it is?”

“I don’t know! But if it were a gas leak, I’m pretty sure the FBI wouldn’t be here to investigate, least of all sneak around the school after hours. So why don’t you tell me what’s really going on here, Mr FBI Agent?”

David sighs. He’s been doing that a lot lately. “Look, Mr Harrington, this is a federal matter and you should not be here.”

“I’m not leaving,” Harrington says stubbornly and David raises an eyebrow.

“You know, I could just charge you with obstruction.”

Harrington just stares back at him and doesn’t move and that’s when David sees him. It. The ghost of Glen Morrow.

“Shit,” he says.

Steve Harrington whirls around.

“What the fuck,” he says.

“Get behind me!” David shouts and he’s already grabbing Harrington’s arm and shoving him behind himself. Harrington makes a sound of protest but David ignores him as he lifts his gun and shoots the ghost with a salt bullet. As quickly as it had appeared, it vanishes again and David breathes a sigh of relief.

“So, a gas leak, huh?” Harrington asks sardonically and David closes his eyes in defeat. He’s not going to get out of that one. But, it occurs to him, he might as well use Harrington’s presence to his advantage. Harrington said that he’s the supervising teacher of the AV Club. He might know where the radio is. 

He turns around and grabs Harrington’s shoulders.

“The radio, where is it?”

“What?”

“The new radio the school got, it’s not in the AV Club room.”

“Yeah, I know. There was, ironically, a leak, we had to move all functioning equipment somewhere else. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Where is it?” David repeats intently and Harrington shrugs his hands off before stepping away and crossing his arms.

“I’ll tell you. If you tell me what’s going on.”

David grits his teeth. “Fine. I’ll tell you on the way. I promise. Now  _ where’s the radio _ ?”

 

 

 

“So, ghosts, huh?” Harrington says as they’re trudging down a long hallway.

“Yup,” David says. Harrington’s taking this whole revelation pretty well all things considered. “You’re taking this pretty well.”

Harrington shrugs. “Eh, not the weirdest thing that’s happened to me, to be honest.”

David wants to ask about that, he does, but they have more important things to do and he’s still straining his ears for any sign that the ghost might be returning.

“Honestly, I probably should’ve expected this. Of course ghosts are real. Man, Dustin’s gonna get such a kick out of this.”

“You can’t tell anyone about this,” David interjects quickly.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. I shouldn’t even have told you about it.”

“So what, you’re gonna have to kill me now?”

David remains silent just to see Harrington’s reaction and the man doesn’t disappoint as he whirls around and shines his flashlight right into David’s eyes, his eyes wide as saucers.

“I was joking!” he all but squeaks and David laughs.

“So was I.”

Harrington pauses and points an accusatory finger at him.

“You, Mr FBI Agent, are an asshole,” he says and David laughs again.

“Careful, that’s defamation of character.”

Harrington pulls a face at him but they both fall silent again. David watches him from the corner of his eyes. Harrington really does seem surprisingly composed. Sure, he looks a little scared but David still remembers his own first encounter with the supernatural and he had taken it decidedly less well. There was a lot of weirdness surrounding Steve Harrington.

“So there’s an entire division of the FBI investigating shit like this?” Harrington breaks the silence and David grimaces.

“I wouldn’t say ‘division’. It’s more like a team. A small team.”

“Really? How small?”

“We’re five people.”

“Wow,” Harrington says, “That’s… huh.”

“Yeah,” David agrees. There were still many people who looked down on him and his team and they didn’t get half the resources they needed which, to be honest, David never stopped being bitter about. But his work is important, he knows it is, so he keeps doing it to the best of his abilities in the hopes that one day, they’ll get the recognition they deserve.

Harrington suddenly stops in front of a door. “This is it,” he says. “This is where we put the radio. So, uh, what’s going to happen now?”

“Now you’re going to leave and I’m gonna destroy the radio and get rid of the ghost.”

“ _ What _ ?” Harrington yells and David winces. “You’ve gotta be kidding me, now you want me to just leave?”

“I’ve wanted you to leave the whole time,” David replies and Harrington crosses his arm.

“Oh, I see. Well, tough  _ shit _ , Mr FBI Agent, because you’re not going to get rid of me. This is  _ my  _ school and I’m gonna protect it.”

“Really, and what are you gonna do? Wave your bat at the ghost?”

“It worked well enough the first time, didn’t it?”

David’s reply is cut off by a sudden bang and then the ghost is there again, looking absolutely livid and murderous. Shit.

“Shit,” he curses. “It knows what we’re here to do.”

Harrington gulps but hefts his bat nevertheless. “Too late for me to run now, huh?”

David curses again, this time more creatively. “Alright, fine,” he hisses, keeping a close eye on the ghost. “I can’t believe I’m about to do this. Fuck. You distract the ghost while I try to destroy his radio, okay?”

“You want  _ me  _ to distract the ghost?” Harrington whisper-yells, his voice cracking slightly and David shrugs.

“You said it yourself. It worked well enough the first time.”

Harrington glares at him but turns around to face the ghost anyway and David quickly opens the door and slips into the room.

“Alright, you ugly asshole!” he hears Harrington yell. “You think you can scare me? I’ve faced way scarier things than you!”

David starts quickly looking around, trying his best to find the radio as soon as possible all the while he hears Harrington squaring off against the ghost outside the room. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked Harrington to fight the ghost to distract it but David needs to make sure that the radio’s taken care of properly. He can’t take the chance of the ghost surviving.

The light of his flashlight finally lands on the radio responsible for all of this and he lets out a triumphant sound.

“Found you, you little shit.”

He’s about to pick it up when there’s an almost deafening Sound and Harrington comes crashing through the door, followed by the angry ghost of Glen Morrow. Harrington groans and struggles back into an upright position.

“I’m fine!” he yells. “Don’t worry about me!”

And David doesn’t. Because he’s a bit too busy being worried about himself. The ghost completely ignores Harrington and zeroes in on Dave, letting out an inhuman screech. 

“Shit,” David curses. “Shit, shit, shit.”

He fumbles for his gun as the ghost dives towards him with outstretched claws and  _ fuck _ , he left his gun lying on one of the shelves and he thinks of Lisa and of how he’s never going to see his little girl again and he can’t believe it’s going to end like this, Danvers is going to give him  _ so much _ shit for this and-

The ghost lets out another scream, this one less murderous rage and more pain, and David watches a bat with iron nails sail right through its translucent form. The ghost momentarily turns away from David to Harrington, who’s kneeling on the ground, having just chucked his bat at the ghost in a desperate attempt at keeping it from killing first David and then Harrington himself.

“Yeah? How do you like that, you asshole, huh?” Harrington crows but the triumph is short lived as the ghost shrugs off the effect of the iron nails and continues his advance on David.

“Fucking destroy that radio!” Harrington yells and David spins around, thinking that if the ghost is going to get him, he’s at least going to take it with him.

He grabs the radio, chucks it into a dustbin filled with paper and fumbles with his matches. He can feel the coldness of the ghost spreading and he knows it’s getting close, closer, too close and shit, he needs to hurry. He strikes one match but it doesn’t catch fire and with a curse, he drops it and goes for the next match. This has to work, it  _ has  _ to. The second attempt fails as well and the third and he hears Harrington scream “What the fuck is taking you so long?” and then gunshots.

He’s momentarily distracted by the shots and the ghost’s screeching and he looks down at Harrington, who’s just furiously unloading one salt bullet after the other into the ghost until the gun clicks, having run out of ammunition and that’s when the match finally lights up and he drops it into the bin, watches it go up in flames as the ghost descends on him and then-

Quiet.

David lets out the breath he’d been holding. The ghost. Is gone.

They did it.

He slides down onto the ground, next to Harrington, both of them panting heavily as they look at the smoldering remains of Glen Morrow’s haunted radio.

“You okay there, Harrington?” David asks after a few seconds.

“Peachy,” Harrington huffs and then he starts laughing. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Yeah,” David agrees and then they’re both laughing.

“It’s Steve, by the way,” Harrington says once they’ve calmed down a little.

“What?”

“I figure with what we just went through, you might as well call me by my name. So. Hi, I’m Steve.”

Harrington holds out his hand and with a smile, David reaches out to shake it.

“David.”

**Author's Note:**

> And then they keep meeting during investigations because Steve just attracts weird shit and they fall in love and absolutely get married the day gay marriage becomes legal.  
> I might continue this if the interest is there or if inspiration strikes again but for now, this shall remain a one shot.  
> Comments and kudos are what keeps me alive so y'know, feel free to do The Thing. Thanks for reading!


End file.
